A numerical study on the behaviour of foundations resting on fibre reinforced soils using an innovative enhanced soil-fibre finite element

ABSTRACT

A numerical study has been conducted to investigate the behaviour of footings (i.e. the settlement and the bearing capacity) resting on fibre reinforced soils. An innovative Enhanced Soil-Fibre (ESF) Finite Element has been introduced and implemented in order to more efficiently analyse the behaviour of such footings. The ESF element is a 16-noded finite element with a central region specified for the fibre geometrical and mechanical properties. This element can be effectively used in place of a rather fine mesh to fully model the arbitrarily distributed fibres in a soil body. Therefore, the computational efforts become considerably less in comparison with conventional finite element modelling. A series of design charts have been presented to avail direct application of the results for practical purposes. The design charts contain the settlement reduction factor or the bearing capacity factor relating the behaviour of footings on reinforced soils to those on unreinforced soils. Design charts are developed for a wide range of mechanical properties common in practical cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Reinforced soil
• Enhanced Soil-Fibre (ESF) element
• foundation
• bearing capacity
• settlement
• sand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).